Sly Boots wrote:Honestly mate, just write the book you want to write. Some people will like the extra stuff, others won't. What matters is if you feel it should be there to tell the story you wanted to tell.

Some people have criticised the way I switch between characters, others have said they like that structure. Personally I feel it's the right way for me to tell this particular story, but have got other ideas lined up with a more simple narrative structure.

That's pretty much what I decided. I did spent a good while pondering things though, but came to the conclusion that I had written the story I wanted to write, in the way I envisioned it. OK, you can always think of small improvements with the benefit of hindsight, but cant we all.

As far as switching between characters, I like that sort of stuff, I really do. I know experts tend to frown on that, but experts arnt always right.

Quite a lot of the fantasy books I read involve multiple perspectives. I think that so long as you're capable of writing multiple characters that are endearing enough and so that the plot intertwines to give a fuller picture, then there's not really a limit on how many character perspectives you can have. The sweet spot tends to be three before the book runs the risk of going beyond 600 pages, but even then it can work if you're convincing enough. As Sly says, GRRM has so many different perspectives I've lost count; particularly in the last couple of books where he even starts introducing minor perspectives which only have the odd chapter or two.

There's a dialogue about a quarter of the way in when Richard travels to see Markus to talk about the dark parchment they find and Markus says that if he'd known what it was the first time he saw it he'd have burnt it. Then in the same passage he explains how they collected numerous other pieces and hid them, right? So if he knew what they were at that point and had collected various pieces, why didn't he just burn the lot right then!? And if they've got the supposedly final piece that the bad guy needs, why don't they just burn it now? Even if he invades and kills them, the last piece of the puzzle he needs to do bad magic is at least destroyed.

Did I just not comprehend it deeply enough on the train or is that a bit of an oddity?

It took a while for them to understand exactly what it was that they had found. Although they couldn't know for sure where the rest was, they assumed Lord Gamil had them. Destroying them would have been the obvious thing to do. But at the time they naively thought:-

a) They could keep the pieces hidden from Lord Gamil, who would never know where, or how, to find them even if he did suspect the Coalition had them.

b) As long as Gamil only had a part of the parchment, it was not a threat to them.

c) They also thought that one day it would be possible to study, and thus as a consequence, better understand how to combat the threat.

That wasn't overtly clear from what I recall reading. It just struck me as odd because if I had a portion of a potentially world ending device that we had all agreed was evil, first thing I'd do is kill it with fire.

Finished it. I can see why some of the reviews pick up on the politics side being a little off kilter. Particularly towards the end of the book you don't really get a good feel for any of the battle that is going on because the perspectives just jump around and all each character does is describe troop movements and numbers of men etc. The way it moves between so many characters is a bit manic without actually giving you any real meat of the battle, so I did struggle to really get much out of those chapters.

Not to knock you down though pal, if I'm not enjoying a book I usually just drop it half way through. It's a good effort for a first time writer and I'm sure the learning experience provided by the whole endeavour has helped towards your second book.

I tried to do something different with the battle, as I didnt want a traditional 'blood letting' battle scene. I was conscious of not putting people off who maybe didnt like that sort of thing. In hindsight there are a few things I would do differently. Nothing major, tweak's to a few scenes, one large scene in the first third of the book I would remove completely. Plus a couple of minor new scenes. I did at one point think of removing the whole of the politics and military side of things completely, and concentrate solely on the main story.

But as you say, as a first effort I can be pretty pleased. After all, hindsight is a wonderful thing. I have learnt a hell of a lot writing that. Hopefully I can put all those lessons into book 2.

As I said a while ago in this thread, you can make a dual story work with the main characters and the politics side back home, but like every story you need to avoid meandering about and it needs to have a strong focus. I think you're guilty perhaps of shifting around too much between too many sub characters for the plot to really shine through.

Earlier on in the book there's a chapter with the master of coin character where they talk about how "ohh, this will play hell with the markets" and then we never hear from them again. I get what you were trying to convey with the wider implications of the war and all, but one piece of advice I read years ago when I was aspiring to be a writer is that if the chapter isn't driving any real elements of the plot forward, cut it ruthlessly. It's not that you can't include chapters set with the treasury characters, just that they need to be reworked slightly to fit in more smoothly.